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Originally Posted by GoldenBoot
Can you elaborate, please? I find that this opinion could be flawed and I am interested in why you feel this way.
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This was asked re: my assumption that SA is likely to be more sports-ready than Austin is. An important caveat here is that I don't care much about this issue, so I don't study it. My impression is that sports tend to be more important to people who have routine lives and don't already have a lot of other activities and interests on their plate. Sports certainly weren't important to most of the grad students I knew when I was at UT, and Austin is a highly-educated city. Sure, in terms of being able to pay for ticket it's helpful to be able to afford them, but nearly everyone I've ever known who places a high importance on sports is a blue-collar or routine white-collar worker, and who have strong social ties to an in-group of compatible people. This in-group often consists of neighbors, something I've seen a lot of in Austin where there are big watch-parties for Longhorn or Cowboy games and most of the people attending are neighbors and co-workers.
So, my "reasoning" (an overly-charitable word for my off-the-cuff remarks) is that San Antonio has a higher population of people who have steady blue-collar or routine white-collar employment, with relatively stable lives, who value community, neighbors, and co-workers over novelty, continuing education, career development, and the arts. Obviously there are more similarities than differences between Austin and SA in this regard, so I'm only saying that there's a difference at the margins, that Austin has a higher percentage of people with interests that take priority over sports.
What I meant by Austin having a more transient population is simply that the average time people have lived in Austin is probably lower than for SA. This is only a guess, but seems like a reasonable one. When people are in career-building or youthful exploration modalities, they're probably less likely to latch on to identification with a city's sports teams.
Quote:
Originally Posted by GoldenBoot
Tech employees do not fit a professional sports franchise demographic? I disagree as, for one thing, they have plenty of disposable income (one of the prime factors when reviewing a region). Simply look at Silicon Valley and the entire San Francisco Bay Area (home of the U.S. technology industry). The 49ers just built a stadium in Santa Clara (dead center of Silicon Valley). There are the SF Giants, Golden State Warriors, Oakland A's, Oakland Raiders (for now), San Jose Sharks, San Jose Earthquakes...all are doing pretty well, I believe, with a huge amount of techies as season ticket holders.
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Right, San Francisco is an interesting case. I think a lot of the success of sports franchises there has come from a long history of how those teams were developed. It points to the fact that it's not just the demographics of a region that determines the success of sports, it's the way those teams are managed and marketed. SF's regional teams have tended to be very good at building relationships with the area's culture, whereas we can see just the opposite in Los Angeles.
Maybe one of the reasons why F1 hasn't been as successful as hoped in Austin is that it still has the flavor of being an outsider, in spite of F1 Fest and other efforts at outreach. I personally feel sort of alienated by F1, and even though I'm a fan of it being a success, I feel absolutely no personal connection or interest in it. I know one person who is a car fanatic and he's sort of engaged, but I don't know anyone else who gives a flip about it. It's a tough sell --- how do you make an international elitist event more relatable to Austin? Probably not gonna happen. As trendy as our city is for Texas, it's not exactly Monte Carlo or Dubai. I wish them well but I'll be surprised if they stay here. F1 will never have that "down home" vibe that Texans relate to.
Quote:
Originally Posted by GoldenBoot
Another thing to consider is that a large portion of Austin's growth are people from regions where there were major sports franchises...so, there is a better than average chance that they would support a major franchise in Austin (depending on what it is...).
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Hmm, i would think almost the opposite --- people often retain loyalty to the teams they leave behind. Do we have any data on this? It's an interesting question.
My general impression of people moving to Austin is that they're coming here for economic opportunity, culture, and climate, whereas sports would be the last thing on their minds. I have absolutely no data to back up anything I'm saying, though.
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